A fascinating story about the birth and death of the American auto industry: about pride, missed opportunities, underestimation of Japanese manufacturers and tastes of citizens, failure of corporate culture. How does the story end? To save the legendary brands, Obama took $100 billion from the pockets of American taxpayers - this amount would be enough to buy all the sedans and pickups that were on the American market in the first half of 2009. Pulitzer Prize winner Paul Ingrassia writes a fascinating story about people, ideas, flawed and ingenious decisions, the drama of union politics. And trying to understand: was the course of self-destruction inevitable?